


Lip-Reading Threats and False Alarms

by Icarus (Slickarus)



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Character Study, I will never fail to work in Reformatory boys where they don't belong, Melchior is a certified creep in this one, it's not cute it's creepy, what Melchior does is in no way healthy let me just say that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 00:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10424859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slickarus/pseuds/Icarus
Summary: Or, the five people who didn't have to see Melchior Gabor covered in body paint, and the one person who did.





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I came up with this but it's basically Melchior through the eyes of 5 different people. And he's a grade A creep. I repeat: nothing he does here is good human action. Don't be like Melchior.
> 
> Title from Human Hands by Elvis Costello (but I prefer the Sondre Lerche version tbh)

There was nothing that Ilse wanted to do less than talk to the mansplain guy.

Okay, obviously that wasn’t his real name, but that’s what she called him in her head. This was a lecture class, for Christ’s sake! She wanted to kick back, take some notes, and listen to their teacher drone on but  _ this guy _ always found a way to turn class into a debate.

And Ilse wanted nothing to do to him. Except, she had Moritz Stiefel’s notebook. And Moritz was best friends with the mansplain guy, apparently. The only reason Moritz sat in the back, by Ilse, was so if he’d had a long night he could nap it off without anyone noticing. Eventually, Ilse just began sending him her notes after class, and that’s pretty much where their friendship ended.

But Moritz was always talking to mansplain guy when Ilse saw him anywhere else on campus. So when Moritz unexpectedly bolted out of class after it was dismissed, dropping his notebook, Ilse picked it up and realized she had no idea where to find Moritz Stiefel, but she knew someone who did.

“Hey,” she tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to face her with a lazy smile on his face. This was already a bad idea.

“What’s up,” he said, easy as you like. She kept herself from rolling her eyes.

“Your roommate left his notebook.” She pushed it toward him. His brow furrowed.

“My roommate left his notebook?”

“Yeah. Moritz Stiefel?” Recognition clicked in his face.

“Oh. He’s not my roomate.”

“Sorry.” She didn’t feel sorry. “Can you get it to him, though?”  _ And please finish this conversation so I can leave. _

“Yeah,” he said, opening it to flip through the pages. “Hey, look at this.”

_ Just walk away, Neumann, you’ve done your good deed for today. _ But the mansplain guy continued.

“He draws! That’s fucking priceless.”

“I don’t think you shou-”

“And captions, too. ‘ _ A naked blue angel appears through the blinds-’ _ ”

“I’m gonna go,” Ilse said loudly, pushing up out of her chair and walking away. As she left, she could hear mansplain guy softly speaking to himself.

“A naked blue angel, huh? Huh.”

She made a mental note to have Moritz kiss her shoes next time she saw him for letting her go through this.


	2. ii

Working at the grocery store means things stop getting weird after a while. Wendla’s seen enough strange combinations of items in the checkout line that nothing really fazes her. Even the weird customers have just become creepy regulars.

Or really creepy regulars.

Like smoker creep. Okay, maybe she should have come up with a better nickname for him, but she preferred it to using his own name. Not that he minded using hers.

And it pissed her off. It pissed her off that he used it casually, like they were friends. It pissed her off that he could pronounce it flawlessly. Everything about smoker creep pissed her off. The way he would smile and lean over the counter as she scanned his Newports and keep his eyes trained on her the whole time. She felt like twin rifles were pointed at her, ready to fire at any moment if she made a wrong move. So she kept it cold, polite, and clear as day that she was not interested.

At least she thought she did, but he still gravitated towards her checkout lane even if hers had the longest line. The number of receipts he’d written his number on had burned the digits into Wendla’s memory, though she tried desperately to get them out. She couldn’t even switch her shift because she had to work around classes, so they were even on the same schedule. She couldn’t wait to find some job that didn’t have smoker creep around all the time.

He came into her lane like he always did, but today with something different. Well, there were the Newports of course, but there were also a couple bottles of body paint. She did not want to know why he had them.

“Wendla Bergmann,” he said as he sidled up to the register. She didn’t know how he learned her full name, but he used it every time he came to check out. She abhorred that. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Cash or credit?” She scanned the blue paint (still weird) as quickly as she could and lined the bottles up so he could bag them himself. He chuckled.

“I feel like you should know by now.” She kept her eyes trained on the register so she wouldn’t have to see his smarmy face. She read him his total and never handled cash faster in her life.

“Have a good day,” she said almost imperceptibly.

“You too. It’s always a pleasure, Wendla.” He winked as he grabbed his bag, but Wendla was already focusing her attention on the next person in line.

Out of all the creeps in the store, why did it have to be  _ this one _ that liked her so much?


	3. iii

Dieter was never expecting anyone to be home when he came in during his Thursday afternoon break. His suitemates Rupert and Ulbrect were either in class, or cutting it to go get high and eat french fries, and his roommate was god knows where. Actually, his roommate was AWOL most of the time. Sometimes (rarely) Dieter felt bad for him since he didn’t have any friends that wanted to room with him. At least he kept to himself.

But anyway, Dieter was never expecting anyone. In fact, he was counting on the fact that  _ no one _ would be coming in or out of the room. So he liked to engage in his favorite guilty pleasure. He’d lay out on the couch, put his feet up, get out his laptop, and watch his favorite thing:

TLC. Dieter fucking loved shit shows. His personal favorite was Say Yes to the Dress, but he’d really watch anything so long as there were confessionals and heartfelt tears. Sometimes he needed to grab tissues, and if his friends ever asked, he lied and said he was jacking off on the couch. Those few hours of time on Thursday were very precious to him.

But today, after he’d gotten about ten minutes in, the main door opened and he smacked the space bar on his computer so fast he almost knocked it off the table.

“Gabor?” The guy stood in their doorway, looking almost as shocked as Dieter. He was carrying a plastic grocery bag in one hand and his keys in the other. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my room, too,” Gabor said quietly. “I’m just dropping off some stuff.” He nodded to the plastic bag and shut the door, crossing towards their bedroom. Dieter closed his laptop with his socked foot.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Just some stuff.”

“Stuff?” Before he could react, Dieter grabbed the plastic and looked inside.

“Why the fuck do you need this much paint- is this body paint?”

“I’m, uh, going to the game this weekend.” Dieter snorted.

“Bull _ shit _ , our team’s not even blue.” Gabor blushed. “Aw, shit, are you using this to get freaky?” He tossed the bag back at him. “That’s fucked up, dude.”

“Whatever,” Gabor said. “I’ll be back later.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Dieter said. Gabor dropped the bag in their room and walked towards the door. “Use protection,” Dieter called after him.

After a safe minute of waiting to make sure no one was coming back, Dieter opened his computer back up.  _ If she doesn’t say yes then she’s a goddamned fool. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember Dieter?


	4. iv

To Hanschen, the best part of living in a suite was the bathroom situation. Sure, he had to share it with three other guys, but when he got home from class, there was nothing he liked better than pissing somewhere familiar.

But he knew something was off when the door was closed.

He knocked on it tentatively, but got no response. He tried the knob, but it was locked. He knocked again.

“I know you’re in there, Moritz. How long are you gonna be?”

“Uh, a couple minutes,” the voice on the other side said, that was definitely  _ not _ Moritz Stiefel, or even Georg or Otto (though Hanschen had just seen them, so he figured that already.)

“Okay, who the hell are you and why are you in my dorm room?”

“Wait, Hanschen?”

“I swear to god I’m going to break down this door.”

“Okay, woah, it’s me. Melchior.” Melchior? Melchior “fight me” Gabor? Of all the people in the world to be in Hanschen’s bathroom, why did it have to be this prick?

“Jesus, Gabor, what are you doing here? You don’t even live in this dorm.”

“I know, I know. I came to, uh, visit Moritz to see if he needed any help studying and, well, he’s not here so I figured I could wait.” Hanschen sighed. This was a shared space, after all.

“Fine, whatever. He’ll probably be back soon.”

“Thanks.”

“I could make you wait outside, but I’m feeling nice today.” Then Hanschen remembered why he’d knocked in the first place.

“Are you going to be finished anytime soon?”

“Maybe in, like, three minutes.” Hanschen rolled his eyes and walked out of the room to find somewhere else to piss.

_ “You come into my goddamned space and spend three hours in my goddamned toilet I swear to God the next time I see Moritz Stiefel…” _

By the time Hanschen got back, the bathroom door was wide open again, but there were footprints leading to Moritz’s room that were outlined in bright blue.

_ “What the fuck, Gabor,” _ Hanschen muttered as he walked into his room and shut the door to add another barrier between him and Melchior.


	5. v

“Melchior?” When Moritz opened the door to his suite, he was not expecting to see his best friend leaning against his desk with a towel over his shoulders and his hair still damp. “Did you take a shower? In my room?” Melchior looked at him, a little shocked to see him.

“It’s a long story. I think this is your towel.” Moritz nodded. “Okay, good, Hanschen would kill me if I used one of his.”

“Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

“You left your notebook in class today.” Melchior held out Moritz’s notebook towards him.

“That’s it?” He took the notebook in his hands. “Why did you shower, then?” Melchior sighed.

“Do I really have to tell you?”

“It’s pretty weird to shower in someone else’s bathroom so yeah, I’d like that.”

“Fine. First of all, don’t get mad.”

“I don’t even know what you did; that’s not fair.”

“So I read your notebook.”

“You  _ what?” _

“Just a little bit! And I saw your, uh, captions.” Moritz’s face turned bright red.

“It was just a dream I had one time.”

“Anyway, the part about the naked blue angel stuck with me, right? So I, uh,”

“You what?”

“Okay, it sounds really stupid, even when I say it, but I painted myself blue and waited for you in your room.”

“You painted yourself blue?” Moritz nearly dropped the notebook in shock. “Like,  _ all _ of you, or just-”

“All of me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really know,” he admitted.

“That’s really fucked up.”

“I guess I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Like, really fucked up. I think that’s borderline illegal.”

“Yeah.”

“And like, maybe  _ I  _ wouldn’t have cared,” Melchior looked up at him. “Because we’re friends,” he said quickly. “But if someone else walked in on you…”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I got home first.”

“Yeah,” Melchior drew out the syllable, staring at the floor. 

“How long did you wait?”

“Only like ten minutes, it was, uh, kind of cold.”

“I see.” Moritz furrowed his brow, thinking. “Melchior, I’d like you to please leave my room.”

“Understandable.”

“And never come in here again.”

“Really?”

“At least not until I’ve thought more about this, I guess. But please leave.”

“Okay.” He took the towel off of his shoulders and hung it on a chair. “Sorry, by the way.”

“Yeah,” Moritz said. “Goodbye, Melchior.”

“Bye, I guess.” When he heard the door click shut, Moritz exhaled a huge sigh. He had a lot to think about - they’d been such good friends, but this was, well, fucked up. At least no one else was here to see this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or so he thought...


	6. i

Oh God. Otto had never shut a door so fast in his entire life.

_ I’m gonna bleach my entire brain so I never have to think about that again. _

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this, I love hearing feedback from y'all.  
> Or visit me on social media and say hey!  
> [Tumblr (thereinkiss)](https://thereinkiss.tumblr.com/) [Twitter (Slickarus)](https://twitter.com/slickarus)


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